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The 68th Venice Film Festival has unveiled its slate of films, and it's loaded with films we've been dying to see, a couple we're at least curious about and one we have seen.

The George Clooney-directed political drama "The Ides of March," starring Ryan Gosling, will kick things off Aug. 31, with White Stillman's "Damsels in Distress" bringing things to a close on Sept. 10. In between will be Madonna's directorial debut, and new films from Thomas Alfredson, Andrea Arnold, Roman Polanski, Abel Ferrarra, Yorgos Lanthimos, Steven Soderbergh and William Friedkin, to name a few.

You may recall that last year's winner, selected by a jury led by Quentin Tarantino was Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere," which went on to bore critics and moviegoers alike, and later sparked a controversy when QT didn't even name it to his list of the year's 10 best films. Lets' hope this year's jury does a little better.